


Hiding in the Daffodils

by lillianmmalter



Series: HM Queen Peggy [5]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Babies, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Puppies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-27 00:31:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14413800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillianmmalter/pseuds/lillianmmalter
Summary: Great Britain has a new prince. Its oldest princess is not amused.





	Hiding in the Daffodils

**Author's Note:**

> The Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a new prince today, so all of you get HRH fluff along similar lines to celebrate.
> 
> Thanks to [Paeonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paeonia/pseuds/Paeonia) for the beta read.

The new baby was a boy.

Rosie was excited because he was a baby and she liked babies for some dumb reason, but Lizzie had wanted another sister. Girls were better than boys, and if the new baby had been a girl they could have all ganged up on George and proved that they were better than him no matter that he got to be King when he grew up and they would all only ever be princesses. Which wasn’t fair at all, because Lizzie was older than Rosie by twelve minutes, and both of them were older than George by four whole years. He was three years old and he couldn’t even read yet, not even his ABCs right every time. He was so stupid. Boys were stupid. But now George had an ally of another boy in the family, which was stupid and made Lizzie very cross.

She didn’t see what all the fuss of a new baby was for anyway. They couldn’t even do anything for ages.

Lizzie sighed and kicked at the ground, getting dirt all over her black patent leather shoes. She’d sneaked out from under Nanny Kate’s nose again, which wasn’t hard no matter what Rosie said. Sometimes the footmen would wink at her as she sneaked away, and if she made it to the kitchens without being caught, some of the cooks would give her sweets and let her squish her hands in the dough for the dinner rolls Daddy liked.

She didn’t sneak down to the kitchens today, though. All the kitchen staff could talk about for weeks before now was the new baby, and he hadn’t even been born yet, so she knew they’d be talking about nothing else if she went down there today. Lizzie snuck out to the gardens instead.

There were daffodils everywhere in the gardens. Lizzie liked daffodils. She liked their funny middle petals shaped like snouts, and she liked their bright yellow color. The daffodils were rude in Alice in Wonderland, but Lizzie liked to think her daffodils would be nicer to her than that if she was suddenly shrunk down to flower size, not that that would ever happen in real life. It was sometimes fun to pretend, though.

Lizzie walked down the garden paths, occasionally stopping to smell some of the taller flowers that caught her eye. The flowers were definitely better company than anybody inside anyway. Stupid baby.

She bent down to sniff one of the flowers and came face to face with a snout that definitely didn’t belong to a daffodil. It was tan, with curly hair and a wet, black nose. It sneezed.

“Augh!”

Lizzie jerked backwards, landing hard on her bum. She wiped her face with her sleeve. Some of it had got in her mouth. Gross.

There was a yip, and Lizzie suddenly found herself with a lapful of wiggling, curious puppy.

It was one of the Airedales the guards used to help protect the Palace. Or it would be one day when it grew up. It was probably still in training at the moment, and if it wasn’t, it should be, because it was biting at her sleeve and trying to pull her into the flowerbed.

“No! Stop it! Bad dog!”

Lizzie knew better than to try smacking it to get it to let go; it would remember and hate her for it, and possibly let a bad guy through the fence to attack her when it grew up. Still, it wouldn’t let go. If she fought with it much longer, it would tear her sleeve and then she’d be in trouble with Nanny Kate, which was just as awful as Rosie said it was, especially because Lizzie was wearing one of her horrid special occasion dresses that scratched at her legs and left red bumps on her arms from all the starch.

Lizzie thought, then settled on a plan. She let the dog pull her forward, but reached for it at the same time, embracing it around its small, wriggly body. Then she tickled it. 

Daddy used to play that trick with her and Rosie all the time when they were little, though they were big enough now that they rarely let him get away with it anymore. The puppy didn’t have any defense against it, though. Actually, it seemed to like it. Its tail was wagging and its mouth was open in a happy pant. After a while, the tickling turned to scratching turned to the puppy flopping on its back with its tongue hanging out to let her get at its belly. Her belly, actually, because the puppy was a girl.

Lizzie suddenly liked the puppy a lot better.

She was actually quite soft to pet once Lizzie got her fingers beneath the wiry, curly topcoat. And she seemed to like getting her belly rubbed. Lizzie tired of rubbing her belly before the puppy did, anyway, but Lizzie supposed that was just the way of things.

Lizzie stood to look for a stick or something to throw. The gardeners kept these gardens ridiculously tidy; there were no stray sticks anywhere.

The puppy nipped at her skirt and tried dragging her into the flowerbed again.

“No,” Lizzie said firmly. “I won’t go in there. Why do you want me to go in there?”

The puppy pulled a bit harder, forcing Lizzie a step in that direction. She forced it a step back onto the path. If only she had some treats or something, but all she had in her pockets were two squares of chocolate and a stick of gum. She didn’t think a dog would like any of that.

“What are you doing here anyway?” she asked. “You won’t be a very good police dog if you don’t do your training.”

The puppy growled and pulled at her again.

“Sit!” Lizzie commanded. “Go on, sit!”

Sometimes the trainers used hand gestures or a whistle to get the dogs to behave. Lizzie didn’t have a whistle, but she did have two hands. She tried a gesture she thought she’d seen one of the trainers use once. “Sit!”

The puppy sat. It even let go of her skirt first. Lizzie was so surprised and pleased that she crouched down and scratched the puppy behind her ears.

“Oh! Good girl! You’re not a bad dog at all, are you?”

The puppy panted in her face, her tail wagging.

“Lizzie, what are you doing?”

Lizzie started. She was used to hearing her dad come from yards away because his crutch clicked against the ground when he walked, and he didn’t think it was funny to sneak up on her and Rosie the way Mum sometimes did. Besides, why wasn’t he with Mum and the new baby like everyone else?

“I found her in the flowerbed,” Lizzie said, standing. The puppy whined and leaned against her.

“You did, did you?” Daddy asked. He was smiling, so he probably wasn’t too upset.

“She sneezed in my mouth.”

Daddy laughed. “And that made you think she deserved to be petted?”

“I couldn’t find any sticks to play fetch with her, but I got her to sit.”

“I see. We’re supposed to be taking a family picture right now, you know, not stealing other people’s puppies.”

“I didn’t steal her, I found her! And why do we have to take a stupid picture anyway? We just took one for Christmas.”

Daddy stepped closer and put his arm around her shoulders. “Because the people want to see your new baby brother.”

Lizzie pouted. “I hate taking family pictures.”

The photographer always forced her and Rosie into copies of the same itchy, ugly dress, and they had to just stand there for ages smiling and looking stupid and even more identical than usual. She wasn’t even allowed to bring a book or anything to make it less boring.

“I know you do, but the faster we do it, the faster it’s over with.”

“It’s never fast. It takes forever and all the pictures look the same anyway.” 

“You can bring the puppy.”

Lizzie looked up at him then down at the puppy, which had trotted away to dig at the flowerbed.

“No!” she cried, running over to pull the puppy away from the dirt. “Bad dogs dig in the dirt, and you’re not a bad dog.”

The puppy pawed at her leg, getting mud all over it.

“Well, that’ll make for an attractive picture,” Daddy teased. “At least everyone will be able to tell you and Rosie apart this time.” He affected a ridiculous received pronunciation accent. “‘Princess Elizabeth stands on the right wearing this season’s latest trend, muddy ankles.’”

“Daddy!”

“What? You don’t think so?”

Lizzie rolled her eyes and huffed. The puppy pawed at her again, streaking mud higher up her leg.

“Can we really bring her inside?”

“For now. We’ll send one of the footmen down to the guard house to see if they’ve lost any puppies-in-training.”

“You know, if they can’t keep track of their dogs, they shouldn’t get to keep them,” Lizzie said, glancing up at Daddy through her eyelashes.

He laughed, tugging gently on one of her curly pigtails to prompt her to follow him back inside. “You’re not as sneaky as you think you are, Miss Princess.”

“Please? I’m already starting to train her, see? Dilly, come!”

The puppy cocked her head for a moment, but gamely trotted alongside them.

“Very impressive. We’ll talk to your mother.”

That meant yes. Lizzie smiled.

“Why Dilly?” Daddy asked.

“Because she was hiding in the daffodils.”

“Like princess like dog, huh?”

Lizzie pouted. “I wasn’t hiding.”

“Sure you weren’t. You disappeared for an hour for no reason.”

“I wasn’t!”

“There’s nothing in the house for you to hide from anyway. Just a baby.” Lizzie scowled. “If you’re lucky, this one won’t puke all over you.”

Lizzie stopped in her tracks, waited until Daddy turned to her, then glared as hard as she could.

Daddy laughed. “You’re never going to forgive George for spitting up on you the first time you held him, are you?”

Lizzie kept glaring. Daddy laughed some more.

“Come on. I’ll protect you from vomiting babies. You can stand on my other side.”

“I hate babies.”

“Okay.”

Dilly sneezed. She was probably allergic to babies too.


End file.
